Saturday, June 19, 2010

Two of my favorite things happened today: I got mail and I got a magazine!

Al's sister, Holly gifted us (me) with an awesome surprise of a subscription to Bridal Guide Magazine. This was one of my favorite memories made while announcing our engagement. We planned on telling Al's family at a Mother's Day dinner at Monical's Pizza the day after coming home from telling my mom. Upon our announcement, Holly immediately whipped a congratulatory card out of her purse, and handed it to Al and me...prewritten! She said she had been writing out cards before every family gathering for several visits. It was hilarious! Thanks again to Holly. I am definitely enjoying my new reading material!

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

After eating carnival food (giant pizza, giant corndogs, giant gyros, etc.) for 4 days at Bonnaroo, I returned home to a delicious and healthy dinner cooked by Chef Alejandro: Pork tenderloin, baked potato, and green salad with cherry tomatoes and balsamic vinaigrette. I'm a lucky girl!

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Al and I had our first meeting with a travel agent last week! We went to Suzi Davis Travel on Neil Street in Champaign, per a reference from our friends Abbie and Weston, who are getting married in July.

We mostly looked over options for destination weddings and/or honeymoons in Mexico, but were given information about weddings in the Caribbean as well. Our favorite resorts were in Riviera Maya, Mexico...beautiful and affordable! When we left, we were able to take plenty of reading material on all of the different options for resorts and ceremonies, which satisfied my need for free stuff. :)

Only about a week and a half left until Al and I make our final decision!

The name wouldn't suggest it, but Al and I have had the best bonding experience watching this show. Whether it's doing Bill Compton impressions, or talking over the unsettling plot lines of the show, Al and I always have a great time watching. This show is incredibly creepy and weird, but we have grown to love it.

I've found that I am now obsessed with watching tv series on dvd. It started with watching LOST and The Sopranos with Al nearly every night, and now I am completely infatuated with Mad Men.

Also, on a side note, watching True Blood is way more fun if you say it like this. Like the Count on Sesame Street. :)

Monday, June 7, 2010

Saturday, June 5, 2010

On Saturday, we headed up north to Aurora for a photo with my mom's side of the family. This was a gift to my grandparents, Michelle and Don, for their anniversary. It was a nice bonding experience, seeing as it was the first formal family photo that Al has been included in. And, as my mom put it, "He's right in the middle, so it's going to be hard to photoshop him out!"

Just as an aside, my mom is hilarious. Her humor is primarily based on sarcasm; hence, the seemingly mean comments. I swear, it is all in good fun. Or, at least that's what we keep telling Al! ;)

After the picture and a brief (but awesome) visit with my Aunt Becky, who let me borrow her tent for Bonnaroo, we headed to dinner at La Hacienda De Los Fernandez, where I had an amazing Sangria Swirl Margarita. This is my new favorite drink, and the food was pretty good too. We had a wonderful time with my family, though it never feels like it's enough!

We opted not to stay the night, as it seems we have been running around non-stop lately. We said our good-byes and gave hugs all around, then hopped in the car to get on the road home.

It started with a little bit of rain. Next, we heard mention of tornadoes and began to get a bit nervous, but figured we could pull off the road if things got too bad. Al and I flipped on the AM weather station to get some insight into what was going on. We found out that there had been a horrible tornado in Streator, Illinois. While the damage was still being assessed, tornado warnings began to pop up in towns all the way down I-57 toward Champaign. The map below shows how close we were to the worst of it.

As we worked our way down I-57, the storms began to get quite a bit worse. We decided to pull off at a rest station, where all the emergency lights were lit up. This was when I started to get really nervous. We had Mila in the car, and I knew she could tell something was wrong. However, we figured that it was silly to just sit at this rest station, when we didn't even know how close we really were to the worst of this storm system.

As soon as we got in the car, things got ridiculous. Al told me to keep an eye out for funnel clouds every time the lightning lit up the sky. The rain was pouring down and we could barely see a thing. People were slamming on their brakes about every minute when the lightning would strike and you could see how low all the clouds were. It looked like a series of tornadoes were coming right at us...totally horrifying.

Al pulled off in Manteno at a gas station, where we sat for a while and listened to the radio. The rain stopped but my mom was staying on the phone with me, giving me constant updates on what she was seeing on weather.com. She said there were some "life-threatening tornadoes" developing in Momence, and that people in the vicinity were being advised to take cover immediately.

As soon as this system took a turn to the East, we hit the road. We drove through what was essentially a monsoon the entire rest of the way home, dodging tornado warnings, flash-flood warnings, and thunderstorm warnings. (I'm not sure if it's just a warning if you're in the thick of it.) It took us over four hours to get home, but Al did an awesome job driving and kept Mila and I completely safe. However, this is what we looked like by the time we got home...

Friday, June 4, 2010

I learned something new today: Al is my fiance and I am his fiancée. I had no idea that there were two different words for this or that there was an accent on only one of the words. I always thought the only word for it was fiancé. Totally off. Glad I wasted 5 years of my life taking French!

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

True dat. Less than a week after the proposal, Al and I made our trip to Barnes & Noble for coffee and a little light (not so much) wedding reading. We aren't exactly the quickly decisive couple, considering the fact that it took us almost two months to name our dog, so we had all sorts of ideas bouncing around in our heads for what we'd like to do for a wedding and celebration.

Actually, let me correct myself there. I am the diva. I have all sorts of ideas. Al is cool with pretty much whatever, but, I have to say, he has been a very involved fiance! As we were perusing wedding books, he could see me start to panic, so he quickly jumped in and made a brilliant suggestion: wedding presentations. We were to take the next two weeks-ish to put together our own individual ideas about what we'd like wedding-wise in some sort of organized presentation format.

I got right to work. I tend to be a major brainstormer so I spent quite a bit of time reading the introductory chapters of The Wedding Book and doing a lot of internet research to get my head cleared. Unfortunately, this had a totally adverse effect. I was more confused than when I started! Therefore, I decided to create my presentation based around two different scenarios: traditional wedding and destination wedding. I am still torn between the two but I think creating this presentation, and seeing the awesome powerpoint Al did on destination wedding options, at least helped in getting us excited to start laying the groundwork and making some decisions! Woo!